https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism
my reading^

starting with straight physics, outside human conception, much as that’s possible, what can be said to have essential characteristics that make whatever what it is

where might a person start, some certainty regard

maybe the chemical elements

transition said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism
my reading^

starting with straight physics, outside human conception, much as that’s possible, what can be said to have essential characteristics that make whatever what it is

where might a person start, some certainty regard

maybe the chemical elements

Yes, and quantum particles.

Surely the very essence of essentialism.

And the TATE introduction seemed the very essence of either/orist.

transition said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism
my reading^

starting with straight physics, outside human conception, much as that’s possible, what can be said to have essential characteristics that make whatever what it is

where might a person start, some certainty regard

maybe the chemical elements

Not something I’m familiar with.

Existentialism by contrast is something I am familiar with, “Cogito ergo sum” is a statement in existentialism.

As for chemical elements, I see the existence of chemical elements being the core of any communication with an intelligent alien race. Particularly an alien race that communicates by smell. Not mathematics, mathematics is a non-essential.

I have disagreements with Socrates over several matters. Socrates claims that “goodness” does not exist because it cannot be defined absolutely without examples. But I disagree there because “chair” similarly cannot be defined absolutely without examples, any attempt to do so will lead to contradictions, but this doesn’t mean that chairs don’t exist.

From that wiki link.

“Classical essentialists claim that some things are wrong in an absolute sense. For example, murder breaks a universal, objective and natural moral law and not merely an advantageous, socially or ethically constructed one.”

If that were true then war, which contains more murder than any other occupation, breaks a natural moral law.

Sure, although this brings in heavy moral questions about the “naturalness” of morality, about the border between “murder” and “self defence”, about the crime of “incitement to murder”, about whether a horrible ending is better than horrors without end.

Let’s try here https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2005/05/gelman

“Essentialism is the view that certain categories (e.g., women, racial groups, dinosaurs, original Picasso artwork) have an underlying reality or true nature that one cannot observe directly. This underlying reality (or “essence”) is thought to give objects their identity. Essentialism is a place-holder notion: one can believe that a category possesses an essence without knowing what the essence is. Preschool children expect certain categories to have sharp and immutable boundaries.”

If I read that correctly, people who believe in sharp boundaries of racial groups such as “black” and “white” are preschool children who have never grown up mentally?

If there were something that did actually have an “essence”, when nothing else does. A good place to start looking would be the chemical elements, as transition suggests. But even there, nuclear reactions change chemical elements for every chemical element. So even there, there’s no essence. Ditto electrons, from electro-weak theory we know that electrons can change into W particles and did in the early universe.

mollwollfumble said:

transition said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism
my reading^

starting with straight physics, outside human conception, much as that’s possible, what can be said to have essential characteristics that make whatever what it is

where might a person start, some certainty regard

maybe the chemical elements

Not something I’m familiar with.

Existentialism by contrast is something I am familiar with, “Cogito ergo sum” is a statement in existentialism.

As for chemical elements, I see the existence of chemical elements being the core of any communication with an intelligent alien race. Particularly an alien race that communicates by smell. Not mathematics, mathematics is a non-essential.

I have disagreements with Socrates over several matters. Socrates claims that “goodness” does not exist because it cannot be defined absolutely without examples. But I disagree there because “chair” similarly cannot be defined absolutely without examples, any attempt to do so will lead to contradictions, but this doesn’t mean that chairs don’t exist.

From that wiki link.

“Classical essentialists claim that some things are wrong in an absolute sense. For example, murder breaks a universal, objective and natural moral law and not merely an advantageous, socially or ethically constructed one.”

If that were true then war, which contains more murder than any other occupation, breaks a natural moral law.

Sure, although this brings in heavy moral questions about the “naturalness” of morality, about the border between “murder” and “self defence”, about the crime of “incitement to murder”, about whether a horrible ending is better than horrors without end.

Let’s try here https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2005/05/gelman

“Essentialism is the view that certain categories (e.g., women, racial groups, dinosaurs, original Picasso artwork) have an underlying reality or true nature that one cannot observe directly. This underlying reality (or “essence”) is thought to give objects their identity. Essentialism is a place-holder notion: one can believe that a category possesses an essence without knowing what the essence is. Preschool children expect certain categories to have sharp and immutable boundaries.”

If I read that correctly, people who believe in sharp boundaries of racial groups such as “black” and “white” are preschool children who have never grown up mentally?

If there were something that did actually have an “essence”, when nothing else does. A good place to start looking would be the chemical elements, as transition suggests. But even there, nuclear reactions change chemical elements for every chemical element. So even there, there’s no essence. Ditto electrons, from electro-weak theory we know that electrons can change into W particles and did in the early universe.

From Godel we already know that mathematics can’t, without incompleteness or contradiction, contain the integers and the addition operation.

From the demise of essentialism, I hope you realise that the number “one” can’t exist in mathematics either.